Meizu M8 interface redesigned yet again, gets all sparkly
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted May 24th 2008 11:41AM
posted May 24th 2008 11:41AM
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posted May 24th 2008 11:41AM
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compare that to my current ipod theme
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a272/Ocelot13/snap_032300.jpg
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a272/Ocelot13/battery.png
yeah...im liking my ipod.
no one cares, chances are some one can skin the ipod to copy this design, but what does that make the iphone? the clone of a clone? We've come full circle :-)
Uh... I hope I'm not the only one, but....
Ew. That skin is atrocious. As long as you like it, that's cool, but don't pretend it's super-awesome and universally liked.
@Ocelot13: Meizu wins. Sorry.
PS: anyone here who's birthday is also on 29th August? I've just noticed that date on the screenshot.
Yeah, iPod? Screw over. :)
Anyway, that battery sparkle could mean that calling is draining away the battery. Kind of a measure where the juice goes.
man... meizu is a joke.. they'll never come out with the m8... how many years has it been now.. I found a Wi-Phone that has wifi and winmo 6.0... UI is kind of cool as well... http://www.gadgetgreats.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=788&HS=1
Mine is august 27. To days away :(. Mine was always the date displayed on those e-ink watches. But that didn't help me win any of the contests that engadget had :(.
Soon I'm sure there will be an M8 skin for the iPhone and we will have come full circle.
No, it probably indictating the battery is charging, but I'd think that the green whatever would come down from the top instead.
Don't buy this chinas...
Yeah, that doesn't remind me of any existing user interfaces....
Very original work....
yes i agree
Does anyone see an iphone here?
No.
No.
no.
Nein.
Oui.
(That's French for 'no,' right?)
Nada.
Meizu is a perfect example I think of the chinesse companys turning from being cloners to one of the bquality companys of the world.
Its seruously a decent example of what people mean when they are talking about companys that going from making fun little cheapo trinkets to knock offs, slowly to powerhouses that rival the people they once cloned.
So you'd put money on Meizu becoming a Chinese Sony? Apparently Sony and the likes also started off as cloners.
No sony as far as I know did not start off as a cloner, I did not say that at all (I'm actually a sony fanboi come to speak of it, just so that bias is in the open)
Rather if you read alot thats happening in the world of electronics in China is that the cloner companys are producing electrionic where the quality of the clone product, rival the quality of the actual product it is knocking off.
Its getting to the point where many of these knock off companys are becoming there own enity that no longer needs to produce knock offs to produce revenue and excitment over their products.
That is the point I'm trying to make.
Sorry, I'm not proof reading, what I ment to say is the quality of the cloners product is REACHING the point, not that it has yet in most cases.
You're jumping the gun quite a bit. They have no working model. That image in photoshopped.
I do link the new interface though, I'm glad they are finally moving into a design realm that tries to be original, but photoshopping is a lot different from actually coding the device.
True, which is why I added my last comment.
In most cases they are not at the point at all, but rather they are close.
My case is that this is a good example (vaporware or not :-P) of the companys trying to be orginal and slowly getting out the the realm of being simply cloners.
Takamine Guitars is a Japanese company who started off making clones of the big American guitars. Well, they made their own instruments at first, but didn't get big until they started copying the likes of Guild, Gibson Martin, etc. The quality of those instruments was SUPER high, and you could get a Martin HD-35 for an eighth of the price of an actual Martin HD-35. Hell, even the logo on the headstock looked eerily similar to the guitar being copied. They became more popular, and after several letters from Martin and other companies threatening lawsuits, Takamine went back to producing original designs and now is one of the more popular brands of guitars on the market.
Not exactly a tech example, but I do see where you're going with this Meizu idea. It's possible that they can make the jump from clone-house to first-rate company (although they do make their own product designs most of the time), but only time will tell. It's also dependent on whether or not Apple will let them get off with a simple letter or two asking them to stop. Otherwise, they might get sued right through the hole going between California and China.
So now they are trying to rape HTC's Diamond UI too ?
http://www.mrgadget.com.au/catalog/images/htc_diamond.jpg
get a life, this looks nothing like the diamond ui except for ONE part which is the ANALOG clock which ALOT OF UI'S USE.
What analog clock? I only see one clock, and it's digital :-S
I think Meizu has become a fantasy brand instead of a company that actually releases products.
But even as a fantasy brand, they are still copycats.
Sometimes we like to root for the little guy, maybe he'll spark something big you know?
@ZeRo: something big? You mean a lawsuit?
Zero, it seems that you're not following the story her with Meizu... When they first came out with their new phone, it was undeniably a copy of an iphone. When a company carbon copies another companies idea, they're not the unfortunate little guy that everyone should root for, they're, for lack of a better word, copycats. Even Popular Science agrees with me.
Okay maybe I'm blind but I've just compared the UI (theres more photos in the read link) of the M8 and the UI of the HTC and frankly there nothing alike except for the fact that they both use dark colors and an analog clock at the top (the M8 one looks better mind you)
Lastly, the UI was designed by an outside company they contracted not by them.
Oh and I forgot to add, I like this UI of the M8 better than that of the HTC and Apple devices anyways, clone or not.
mmmmm that interface leaves trails of sparkling VAPOR in its wake...
haha for once you apple & htc loving dick heads can suck balls, that interface does not look like the diamond or the iphone or any other device as far as I can tell.
When are you all going to accept the fact Meizu is not like other Chinese clone manufacturers and are actually trying to make a really good product with a great feature set using quality compnents. Eico are a well respected design house and they have come with a great looking and original UI. J. Wong we salute you!!!
If you honestly believe that Meizu would have spent this long just scratching their arses you are a fantasist yourself. This is definitely going to come out and I hope it is a great success. How are they going to survive after not making a new product for so long? Go to Eico's website and look at the M8 Icons in their client project list. This is actually going to happen or do you think Eico is a fake company too who design vapour intefaces?
Brand loyalty is a joke. Fan boi's are dillusional. Maybe you should all go to the factories where all these products are made and compare them, then lets see if you notice any similarities.....GO MEIZU!
"Brand loyalty is a joke. Fan boi's are dillusional. Maybe you should all go to the factories where all these products are made and compare them, then lets see if you notice any similarities.....GO MEIZU!"
"Brand loyalty is a joke"
"GO MEIZU!"
Oh the hypocrisy.
"Brand loyalty is a joke. Fan boi's are dillusional."
Hmm.. Interesting thought. However, I was bored so I decided to compile some of your more recent comments:
"Stop bashing meizu then bringing us almost obsessive updates about their progress every 5 minutes, face it you will all be buying an M8 when it comes out. Long live Meizu! the iphone has no chance in china! hahaha"
"Apple are the real criminals the way they rip off their customers under the guise of 'simplictity' which really means overpriced, extortionate contracts and lack of functions. Their profit margins should be criminal. Long live Meizu.....viva la revolucion! [..] F**k apple and f**k the germans."
"You dumb american f***s are so ignorant it amazes me. You f**kers are going to be sucking chinese dick when your oil runs out and your economy collapses. [..] Who makes all the clothes u fat fuckers wear? who makes all your tech crap and cheap shit plastic toys and bullshit you gorge yourself on? china. you would not have a computer or a mobile phone or a tv without china. [..] In 2O years or less China will have the biggest economy in the world. [..] None of you apple fan boi dick suckers would have 90% of the componenets that make up your overpriced piece of s**t phones without companies copying each others design."
"hahaha, what a bunch of C**K suckers, nothing like the smell of apple fan boy in the morning. [..] This weeks topic is 'how to brainwash the public with closed platform low specd overpriced phones and make them believe they are getting a great deal and that we are the gods of originality. hahahahahahahaha"
So.. yes. "Fan boi's" are indeed dillusional.
I think it would be good to point out that the person in Barr's quotes is Mr. Corsini from earlier posts
Mr Corsini has issues, including apparently either a poor knowledge of the English language that causes him to continuously revert to expletive-laced pseudo-sentences, or else a hopeless fascination with all things obscene, and especially references to male anatomy.
"you would not have a computer or a mobile phone or a tv without china. [..] In 2O years or less China will have the biggest economy in the world."
2O? I know the letter "O" and number "0" are right next to one another, but that's not even a plausible typo.
This will never come out and everyone knows it.
That is the damn truth! This thing has seen more revisions than I don't know what.
I mean how many engineers do they have working on this thing? 1 or 2 and are they only working part-time? Or is the M8 just their second job?
Ridiculous! The 4th iteration of the iPhone will be out before this thing sees the light of day.
I must say I have to agree with you. I followed this product for months and started to get disillusioned by the constant 'updates' which weren't really updates of the sort the fans all deserve. A few months after, I was feeling almost... lovesick for a touch screen phone 'cause I love 'teh gadgets' and boy is this one a biggie. I started shopping around for iPhone clones but none of them really came close. Luckily the opportunity arose to buy an iPhone, thanks to some good grades at school and a contribution from my parents. And although I still check the M8 forum from time to time, I never really looked back. I mean, if the majority of M8 fans are honest they'd admit that all they wanted at the start was a more affordable alternative to the iPhone with the same level of features, but now even that hasn't worked out, they should just get an iPhone. I think the die hard M8'ers that refuse to buy another phone til the M8 is out are just crazy, they're not gonna lose face if they buy another product, they'll just feel much better as they won't be indefinitely waiting any more. That said, the Meizu M6 is a great product (but that's offtopic :) )
If the rest of the UI shows similar differences, then I'd say they're well on their way to doing their own thing with the visual style.
Those dock-area icons are awful, though. Either completely fill them in, or don't fill at all. And I don't know who decided that shape looked like a "person" but it doesn't in Windows XP, and it doesn't here. Looks like a bell.
Then again some of the icons in the iPhone (if I remember rightly, can''t be bothered to go upsatirs and heck) like the navigation icons in the youtube and intsaller applications, aren't completely filled in. I think.
So what if they copied apple's design. Every smart company tries to build off of the success of others.
What, you honestly think they pose a threat to apple's marketshare by building off of their design? WHO CARES! If they really do, thats apple's responsibility to come up with something to outdo the competition.
Companies are groups of people whose sole goal is to separate you from as much of your money as possible in the shortest amount of time. Stop worshiping them.
That's the main problem. Companies think that since the iPhone is successful that they need copy it to sell phones. The iPhone was successful because it was innovative not because Apple copied someone else.
Being innovative starts with a clean sheet of paper, not someone else's design!
The iPhone didn't REALLY start off fresh. Other companies had done the touchscreen thing well before. So it's more like standing on the shoulders of Giants.